THL Library Partners

The Tibetan and Himalayan Library is helping to develop two separate digital library initiatives, targeted at Tibetan and Bhutanese individuals and communities: the Tibetan Community Library and the National Digital Library of Bhutan. The Tibetan Community Library (TCL) is Tibetan language initiative aimed at Tibetans as producers and consumers of the knowledge contained therein. In addition, there is a strong focus on producing knowledge that is socially beneficial to Tibetan communities. It is closely aligned with THL's Participatory Knowledge initiative, which involves providing the tools, training, and other support necessary for Tibetan individuals and communities to use modern tools to analyze, document, and represent their own traditions. The overall initiative is currently sponsored by the University of Virginia and [Machik | http://www.machik.com], but it is anticipated that many other organizations will be involved in its implementation. At present, the project has a very modest grant to begin the actual initial implementation, and we plan to have a first public portal by the summer of 2009.

The National Digital Library of Bhutan (NDLB) is an initiative sponsored by the Royal Government of Bhutan with support from the University of Virginia. NDLB is devoted to documenting the nation and culture of Bhutan, with most of its content built directly by Bhutanese participants. It aims to be beneficial both in aiding Bhutanese in studying and understanding their own culture, and in enabling Bhutanese to better represent their own culture, places, and perspectives to the international audience. The project's implementation began in early 2007, and is slated for a significant public release by the end of 2008.

The relationship of TCL and NDLB to THL is, firstly, that both rely upon THL technologies and repositories, thereby enabling their own funding to focus on content development. It should be said, however, that Bhutanese programmers have also been active participants in helping build some of the key tools and technologies in collaboration with THL.
Secondly, TCL and NDLB can utilize any content within THL, while all of their content in turn also gets exposed to international users of THL. It is thus a mutually beneficial relationship which also allows THL to bring more concrete support to the Tibetan and Bhutanese communities which, along with other Himalayan communities, are the ultimate source of THL's content.

Its relationship with THL is identical to TCL's relationship with THL, except that